Author Archive: Retro

Parade A compilation of short subjects released in the 1930s featuring major stars at play.

Rare home movies of many visiting Hollywood stars and colorful gardens of this California Landmark.

A 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood.

An informational film produced to encourage farmers to grow hemp for war efforts, detailing its many industrial uses.

A documentary showing the struggle to bring electricity to rural areas of the United States.

First we cleared the Indian. Then we cleared the buffalo.” Gosh, didn’t they have a UN back in the 1800s to stop ethnic cleansing? Guess not. They could have sent Canadian troops into the Kansas region to stop the predominantly Christian Yankees from murdering the Ethnic Indians. This movie is full of a narrator shouting about ‘the wheat’ and weird shots of everything from WWI tanks to starving kids and Okies packing their trucks to go west. People say that modern TV news is all flash and no substance. Apparently things were the same in the 1939 though. The end shows how the great Federal Government is setting up agencies to prevent the topsoil from being blown away as it was during the ‘dust bowl’. The govt is also helping all those poor refugees from the drought who had to pack up and move west. Yeah Right.

This short Depression-era documentary describes the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States. It laments the environmental destruction committed in the name of progress, particularly farming and timber practices which cause massive erosion and result in vast amounts of top soil being washed down the river into the Gulf of Mexico. The film focuses especially on the impact this has had on impoverished farmers. It ends on a very upbeat note, however, with a celebration of the TVA, “modern” farming technology, and the use of dams to control the river and prevent flooding.

We Work Again is a 1937 ephemeral film produced by the Work Projects Administration to promote its employment and training efforts for African-Americans during the Great Depression. Various jobs are shown, including public construction projects, domestic service and health care training, adult education programs and performing arts. It is particularly noted for containing the only existing footage of the 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth, directed by Orson Welles and featuring an all-black cast.